Concession
by greekmythgeek41
Summary: Based on the music video "She will be free" by Josh Abbott.


Based on the music video "She will be free" by Josh Abbott. Notes: Takes place in the modern day and age  
**WARNING:** Contains themes of sexual trafficking

(See the end of the work for more notes)

* * *

"You're beautiful," he whispers, holding her face in his hands. "You are," He kisses the corner of her lips. She smiles softly.

"You're so beautiful," he repeats again, his eyes half-closed. Her eyelids flutter shut and she presses her forehead to his, their noses touching. "Do you like me?" he asks, quietly still.

Her breath catches in her throat. She nods.

"You really like me?" he asks. She nods again. "Then will you do something for me?" She nods for the third time. She wants to make him happy, whatever it takes.

He reaches back and picks up a glass of water. It's cloudy.

"I want you to try this for me," he whispers. She holds the glass with both hands and brings it to her lips. The taste is strong and bitter. She wants to cough it out, but he's tipping the glass into her mouth, getting her to drink it. When she's finished, he puts the glass back down and stares at her intensely.

"Good, right?" he asks. She doesn't respond; it felt as if the mixture were hacking her brain, clouding her vision, making her head spin. He kissed her cheek, nuzzling into the side of her face. "Did you like it?"

"Yeah," she breathes, blinking rapidly. The drink is still churning in her stomach, and she feels light-headed and strangely submissive. He touches the inside of her leg with one hand and she almost stops breathing.

"I need you to do something else for me" he says. His breath is hot against her face, and he leans down, far enough that the dark ends of his hair brush feather-light against her face, caught in her lashes. He kisses her again and she feels delirious. "Will you?" he asks.

She nods, intoxicated by his scent-or was it the drink? Her thoughts were muddled. Spots flashed before her eyes.

"I have a friend," he whispers against her lips. "In the next room. I need you to be nice to him, okay?" She nods.

He gets up, letting her hand fall from his grasp, and walks over to the door. When he opens it, a burly man walks in. She sees something being passed from the man's hand to his.

And then he leaves.

She is left alone with the man. He's not at all attractive, especially not compared to him. The man sits down next to her on the bed. She is still confused from the drink. Her skin feels extra sensitive, but she doesn't jump when the man touches the inside of her thigh, moving closer to her. Instead, she is paralyzed.

"I'm Randall," and thats the last thing he says.

This happened four more times.

Sometimes, he would sneak her a pill. Other times, he'd give her his cigarette to try. And each time, another man came into the room, handed him the money, and shut the door.

* * *

She wanted to be wanted and he was very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving. You could drown in those eyes, she said, so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.

She wanted to be wanted, but only by him, and she never got him alone. There was always another man.

So he kissed her sweet, told her she was beautiful and that he liked her a lot, and then he would slip her a pill or a drink and open the door.

She knew how it went—she says I want to be with you tonight and he holds her head underwater. She says I want you inside me and he splits her open with a knife.

"I want to go home," she tells him one day, laying her head on his shoulder. His back is turned, but she can see his jaw tighten. He turns on her.

"What?" he says, holding her face in his hands. "You can't go, baby. I need you here," The intensity with which he stared at her bordered on obscene. She knew he could see the dark ringlets bordering her eyes, the sobs wracking her insides.

"I need...I want to go-I..." She burrows her head in his shoulder and breaks down. He was her tormentor and her solace. She didn't care that he would undoubtedly hurt her at any moment, right now; she just needed somebody to hold her… To tell her these exact words: Its going to be okay. It wasn't of course, she knew that. But she didn't care. She needed the lie.

"You can't leave," he says, holding her chin up so she can look into his eyes. "What happened? You don't love me anymore?" Damn if she didn't love him anymore. She loved him so much it hurt to breathe.

So she let him hold her captive, go through man after man, pill after pill, like clockwork.

* * *

Then one day, a man comes to the door.

He won't let the man in.

And when the man protests, he pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot. Then he locks the door and kneels in front of her.

"I'm done with this," he says softly. The way he fingers his pistol makes her nervous-did 'done' mean he was going to kill her? Was she useless to him now?

But he sets the pistol aside and touches one of her hands with his own. She trembles. He cups her cheek with one hand.

She has just enough time to take in a breath, to blink, to part her lips before he takes them with his own.

Time freezes. Her heart ceases to beat. Her eyes flutter shut.

The cool slip of the small metal loop of his necklace presseds into her skin as he kisses her.

Urgent.  
Gentle.  
So slow.  
Sweet, soft demolition.

He tasted of cloves and coffee. And of something else. A farawat essence, familiar and yet somehow foreign, too. Something sere and arid.  
A little like some.  
A little like decay

Ash.

He was so beautiful, she kept thinking. Just the thought of him drew her knuckles white. She didn't need a god. She had him and his beautiful mouth, his hands holding onto her, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, his hot breath on her neck.

"I'm so sorry," he says, and she tilts her head upwards and marvels at his voice and how, for the first time, she was seeing it falter. "I'm so, so sorry,"

* * *

She's in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell her that her loves her, but he loves her. And she feels like she's done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled herself a grave in the dirt, and she's tired.

She's in a car with a beautiful boy and she's trying not tell to him that she loves him, and she's trying to choke down the feeling and she's trembling, but he reaches over and touches her, like a prayer for which no words exist, and she feels her heart taking root in her body, like she's discovered something she didn't even have a name for.

Then one day he brings her to his house and gives her a drink and opens the door. And the next day he gives her another drink and opens the door, and when she asks to feel his hands on her, she feels another man's hands there instead.

Eventually, he stops opening the door. And when he puts his pistol aside, she picks it up and points it to his head, but she can't shoot and she doesn't even want to shoot, she just wants him.

This time, she's the one giving him a pill. And when he's drugged, he touches her and she lets him because when he touches her, he makes things feel better that she wasn't aware felt so bad. Afterward, when the drug wears off, he comes to his senses and his eyes are red and he looks at her confused but he tells he'll do anything for her and that's when she finds out that he's always loved her.

One day he stops opening the door.

The next day, he stops giving her pills.

The drinks stop, the lies stop, and now she gropes for him on the backstairs or in parked cars like she used to as the road around them grows glossy with ice and his breath softens the view through the glass, already laced with frost. He kisses her scars away and she makes new ones for him.

If he loved her, then it was not in a way she understood.

* * *

**Notes**:

Quotes taken from:

Richard Silken C.J. Roberts Kelly Creagh Henry Rollins

* * *

**Let me know if you want me to continue with a series!**


End file.
